It wasn’t too long ago when Cesar Gracie called Nick Diaz the ‘Rosa Parks’ of MMA due to his constant persecution in his fight career. MMA, a place where a fighter can be compared to one of the greatest civil right activists of all times. I love this sport.
Many of you heard Nick Diaz yell ‘Joe Rogan podcast by night,’ a sound bite so legendary that Rogan now uses it to open his weekly podcasts and even stated that ‘it made his month.’ However, we all remember what was uttered just before Nick Diaz’s post-fight speech, and it came from Cesar Gracie’s larynx. Try using ‘Call that motherf***** out!’ at some point this weekend. If you’re at a restaurant with friends and the food is sub-par, jump out of your seat and scream ‘Call that motherf***** out!’ in the middle of the place. I will guarantee someone in there will clap and agree with you.
On yesterday’s episode of Mauro Ranallo’s ‘The MMA Show,’ Cesar Gracie finally explained that he was actually speaking in ‘209’ when he screamed the now infamous phrase.
“Well what’s going on is unfortunately for me, I had a mic on and I didn’t realize that or else I wouldn’t have said that.”
“Why did I say it? Well that’s the language these guys speak.”
“Before the fight, after the weigh-ins we were told by Joe Silva ‘If you guys want, you guys call people out. That’s how the fights get done, you call ’em out’ and I wanted to make sure Nick knew that. Now I speak several different languages, I’m speaking to you in English so if I speak in Japanese or Portuguese or something, you wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. When I speak to Nick, I have to speak in ‘209enese’ and that’s the language that he understands. If I said ‘Hey Nick, would you like to explain your position and articulate how you would like to fight Mr. St. Pierre, he wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”
“This wasn’t directed at him [Georges St. Pierre], I didn’t think he was going to hear it obviously. This has nothing to do with Georges St. Pierre, I actually like the guy.”
When I was in Stockton, California for a Strikeforce Challengers card this year, I was finally introduced to this elusive 209enese language. It usually began with ‘Hey, look what I just grew’ and was followed by ‘Do you have a lighter?’ 209enese is a language LayzieTheSavage could teach a Harvard linguistics class in.